Copley May Sell Daily Breeze in Torrance, 2 Other Papers

Copley Press Inc. of La Jolla said Thursday that it might sell its 112-year-old Daily Breeze newspaper and two other South Bay publications.

Options for the Torrance-based Daily Breeze, the twice-a-week Palos Verdes Peninsula News and the Beach Reporter, a weekly, also include mergers or other transactions, Copley said in a statement, which didn’t elaborate. The Daily Breeze recently listed daily circulation of 70,300.

Although Copley Chief Operating Officer Charles F. Patrick said in the statement that “our Copley Los Angeles employees have built a solid foundation and the markets served by these newspapers are strong,” other executives of the privately held company acknowledged some serious hurdles.

“We’re in a difficult position in the larger Los Angeles area in a very competitive and challenging market,” said Harold W. Fuson Jr., senior vice president and chief legal officer for Copley Los Angeles Newspapers. Although the Breeze, he said, “is as strong as it could be, it’s a very great challenge to make it successful as a business.”

Many newspapers around the country face declining circulation and advertising as they struggle to compete with electronic news outlets for readers.

Daily Breeze Publisher Arthur E. Wible Jr. made reference to that in a message to the Daily Breeze staff Thursday.

“You are well aware that the media world is changing at a rapid pace,” Wible said, later adding, “There are significant revenue opportunities in this very competitive market that we don’t yet capture.”

Copley Press executives said they hired investment firm Evercore Partners “to assist in evaluating these alternatives.”

The three publications have a combined workforce of 320, with about 280 of those working at the Breeze, Fuson said.

Copley Press publishes 10 daily and nine weekly newspapers in California, Ohio and Illinois, including the San Diego Union-Tribune. It also operates a news service with 1,500 clients and six bureaus in the U.S. and Mexico.

In 1998, Copley shut down the Outlook, a Santa Monica daily newspaper founded in 1875.